Published 5:36 pm, Monday, November 10, 2014

The federal government has an overly loose handle on potential contamination of talc by asbestos.

THE STAKES:

Asbestos-contaminated talc can cause one of the most lethal types of cancer.

Few minerals come into our daily lives quite as much as talc, the fine, powdery mineral known best for the generations of baby bottoms it has dried.

Talc is actually ubiquitous. Talc is used in North America in more than 4,200 different cosmetics items. It is found in more than 40,000 pharmaceutical products, and the use of talc in food and food processing is "expanding rapidly," according to a report by Andrew Schneider of Hearst Newspapers.

And what could be wrong with that — this use of the softest mineral used in products from dried peas to children's balloons? Here's what: Talc can be contaminated with asbestos. As we know from years of lawsuits over asbestos' use in brake linings and insulation, exposure to it can be deadly. The only known cause of mesothelioma, an almost always fatal cancer, is asbestos.

What's worse, at least when it comes to the talc industry, is that the fox is guarding the henhouse. The Food and Drug Administration has left monitoring and labeling to the mines and producers, including importers.

More Information

The nine U.S. talc mines say their products are safe. Yet, people who seem to have no known exposure to the typical sources of asbestos continue to die from mesothelioma.

A study published online in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health includes work from scientists from three different laboratories who tracked asbestos-contaminated talc from the mines to a popular body powder product and into the lung tissue of a woman who died. Tests were repeated several times and consistently showed the contaminated talcum powder released high levels of inhalable asbestos. One of the scientists, Sean Fitzgerald, a geologist with SAI Laboratory in Greensboro, N.C., said research leaves no doubt that asbestos-contaminated talc products are extremely hazardous, "and, in effect, you're literally throwing it in your face."

A unit of the World Health Organization classifies talc that contains asbestos as "carcinogenic to humans." Yet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies operate under a 75-year-old law that has never been substantially updated. As early as the 1970s, public health officials were seeking greater effort by the FDA, which has done little more than reach out for samples from the nine U.S. mines producing talc. Only four complied and even those weren't "raw" samples.

Now Playing:

Further, neither the FDA nor any other federal agency is examining the booming shipments coming from overseas. The Hearst Newspapers investigation showed that, in the last 18 months, more than 1,400 shipments of talc or talc products were sent to the U.S. from 34 countries. China was the largest supplier.

The FDA needs to get out of the pocket of the talc industry and make our shelves safer. And if the agency won't do its job on its own, it is time Congress and consumers demand it.